Falling from his perch: No medal Tom, but you had a good time trying

The Chinese pair were touching greatness. Not faultless, but certainly in the vicinity. Yuan Cao over-rotated a little on his backwards three-and-a-half turn somersault. That can happen, apparently. This may be Olympic diving but nobody’s perfect.

The Mexicans? They were just mad. They took a wild swing at the two must difficult dives of the afternoon and almost nailed them. The judges rewarded their bravery with a silver medal. You can’t begrudge that.

But those Americans? Beaten into fourth place by a bloke who is scared of heights? That has got to hurt. To see David Boudia on the podium collecting his bronze medal having received counselling to help him deal with his fears on the 10-metre platform? These are strange times for Tom Daley and the poster people of the London 2012 Games.

Feel the fourth: The British duo missed out on winning a medal in front of their home crowd

In sync: The British pair led the competition after three rounds at the Aquatics Centre

For Rebecca Adlington, redemption in the
800 metres may be just days away; Daley now waits until next month,
Saturday, August 11, to be precise to see if he can fulfil what so many
saw as his Olympic destiny. If anything, the individual Olympic diving
competition that remains will be tougher than synchronised team-work. He
will know it is the individual mistakes that cost a medal making it
harder, psychologically, to regroup.

Not as hard as some of the toughest moments in Daley’s young life. To
lose a parent so young puts sports contests into perspective, no matter
how grand the prize.

Setting the standard: Daley and Waterfield came flying out of the blocks but fell short of winning a medal

Yet there can be no denying what this meant to Daley and his partner
Peter Waterfield. Time and again the television cameras rested on his
face during Friday night’s opening ceremony. His moment had arrived, his
defining hour. It came and went on Monday, almost in a blur. One minute
Daley and Waterfield were achieving beyond their wildest imaginations,
ahead of the Chinese pair and pulling away at the halfway stage, the
next they were nowhere, fourth and freefalling.

It was as if they had not dived into a pool but fallen through a trap
door. As this is a pairs competition, it could be argued that seven of
their first eight dives were good. Such is the nature of the
competition, however, that one mistake hits the water like a wrecking
ball. In the fourth dive, Waterfield erred, in the fifth it was Daley,
and combined, those mistakes condemned the pair to the status of
observers when the medals were distributed.

Fourth place: so near and yet so far is the generous verdict. Yet it
wasn’t the truth. There were 8.82 points separating Daley and Waterfield
from the American pair in third and the same margin covered fourth to
seventh in an eight-team event.

The more testing the dives became the more the home favourites faded.
Their final dive, a forward four-and-a-half somersault, was neatly
executed but the gap increased because Boudia and Nicholas McCrory had
pretty much nailed it, too. The crowd still cheered wildly, expectantly,
but their optimism was swiftly squashed by the numbers.

Home favourites: But the British pair could manage only fourth

Star: Daley is competing in his second Olympic Games

The judges did not entirely share their delight, it must be said. A lot
of eights. Daley and Waterfield stayed rooted in the first spot that
brings no reward and that gold medal moment for Great Britain looked
ever further away.

The big discussion starts here. Daley, criticised by diving’s
performance director Alexei Evangulov for enjoying his lucrative media
profile, responded by saying that unlike his Chinese rivals he was a
young man who intended to have a life away from his sport.

So close: Daley will turn his attentions to the individual event

The teenager in us all agrees. Yet what do we think now? Indeed, what
does Daley think now? Is there a part of him that believes had he been
as single-minded and one-dimensional he might have achieved as Cao and
Yanquan Zhang did? The potential is there. The Chinese duo have lost
only once in three years and it was to Daley and Waterfield. After three
dives here they were trailing, too.
At which point, all those hours of self-denial took effect. On their
three toughest dives - rated 3.3, 3.6 and 3.6 for difficulty - Cao and
Zhang grew stronger.

Dive five was not their best, but even a substandard Chinese dive
outstrips most rivals. This is the sport, remember, in which silver
often feels like gold, such is the dominance of one country. The British
dives were rated 3.3, 3.7 and 3.6, but such a hash was made of the
first one that the final two became largely academic.

Centre of attention: Prime Minister David Cameron took to the Aquatics Centre to watch Daley and Waterfield

China achieved a perfect circular motion and tremendous height,
according to the most seasoned observers. Britain achieved an almighty
splash, according to people whose experience in this field stopped at
getting slung out of their local baths for bombing. There are some
things it simply does not require years of training to see.

Fourth time out, Waterfield’s feet struck the water, but Daley’s entry
was far from smooth, too. On the next dive it was Daley who faltered,
although Waterfield was hardly a 10.

Agony: A Team GB fan can barely watch as a big crowd gathers in Daley's home town of Plymouth

After the competition was over, they adopted the stance of losing as a
team, as they had previously won as a team, which seemed fair.
Satisfying the expectation levels around London’s poster child is a huge
responsibility for Waterfield and, without loyalty, no pair could
function. The schism between Daley and his first foil Blake Aldridge
cannot be repeated. It was Waterfield who blinked first here, but he
cannot shoulder the blame alone.

There will, increasingly, be an inquest into the trials of Team GB but
perhaps one clue lies in the performance of the silver medallist
Mexicans, Ivan Garcia Navarro and German Sanchez Sanchez (so good they
named him twice).

They dived at times like a couple of kids off a cliff in Acapulco, which
you can do when the weight of a nation’s hopes are not up there on the
platform with you.

Daley wants to have fun like a teenager, and has often done so according
to picture evidence, but for pin-ups this Olympic is not always the
ball it sounds. Sometimes the coolest heads develop a fear of heights,
too.